Dr. Ciara O’Donnell began her career as a primary school teacher in Dublin. During that time she was appointed to the role of Home-School-Community Liaison Co-ordinator working with parents as first educators of their children. In 2005 Ciara was seconded to teacher education services where she held a number of leadership positions related to curriculum, policy and educational disadvantage. She was appointed as National Director to Ireland’s first cross sectoral and multi-disciplinary professional development support service (The Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST), a position she held for ten years. Leading a national team of teacher educators, Ciara continually advocated for teacher professional development to be transformative, sustained and rooted in school context.

Ciara now works as an independent teacher education consultant specialising in teacher and teacher educator learning, professional development strategy, curriculum and school leadership. She also works as a tutor with Maynooth University on school leadership, curriculum studies and teacher education programmes. Viewing teacher educators as a unique group within the profession she is passionate about the need for robust induction for the transition from teacher to teacher educator followed by ongoing teacher educator development through signature pedagogies. Her study exploring the secondment of teachers
to teacher education described by Professor Andy Hargreaves as “ground-breaking research”, has been presented internationally and has resulted in her evidenced based programme for aspiring and developing teacher educators “Becoming and Developing as a Teacher Educator”

Ciara’s published research about the professional learning of teachers seconded to work as teacher educators in Ireland explores their career experiences in navigating and carving out a new professional identity and the transformative impact of this career journey highlighted by transitions and tensions .

Read it here https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2023.2293148
With FREE access available to the same publication at this link
http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/17932

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